Making Mr Twit's beard for Roald Dahl Day

Roald Dahl Day is celebrated every year on the 13th September, on Roald Dahl's birthday. Every year it is marked around the world with special events, and children and adults join in with crafts and activities based around his many fantastic stories.

This year, Penguin Random House books published a special edition of The Twits. Mr Twit is known for having a big, hairy, horrible beard which he never washes and so it ends up filled with bits of old food. There is already a copy of the book available with scratch and sniff stickers, and now you can buy a copy of The Twits which features a real hairy beard on the cover! (affiliate link) You can even download and play a free app - Twit or Miss - where you are challenged to stop food from flying out of Mr Twit's mouth and hitting Mrs Twit, which we've been having a lot of fun with.

We were asked to join in the fun and create the most colourful and creative beard that we could, inspired by Mr Twit's beard in the story.

The children loved the idea of doing some crafting with food! First I cut them each a beard shape from cardboard and we shredded up some bits of black and brown paper. They stuck down the strips of paper, then I gathered together lots of bits of food for them to stick on their beards.

We used Cheerios, bashed up Frosties, bits of pasta, porridge oats and rice, all stuck down with plenty of glue. They loved mixing everything up together (and of course making a big old mess!)

We received some copies of The Twits and crafty bits in exchange for taking part in the challenge. Amazon links are affiliate.

Autumn and Halloween crafts from Baker Ross

I love being a member of the Baker Ross bloggers network! In my latest box I received some lovely autumnal crafts, as well as some fantastic Halloween crafting products.

I have very fond memories of making pom poms when I was little, and the Hedgehog Pom Pom Decoration Kits were perfect for sharing the fun with my little ones. You make the pom pom around the foam shape itself, along with a couple of cardboard rings, and because they are quite small you can make the pom pom up pretty quickly. They come with ribbons for hanging, but mine wanted to keep them as they were so that they could play with them.

Of course in Autumn we also have Halloween, and Baker Ross have a huge range of Halloween crafts - great if you are hosting a Halloween party or if you want the children to help decorate the house for Halloween.

We started with these Skull Keyring and Bag Dangler Sewing Kits. Harry managed the sewing of his easily, and Mia coped pretty well with a bit of help. I really love them, they are so bright and colourful and although we followed the suggested instructions you could really be as creative as you want, and with three in the pack you can mix and match the decorations to make some really unique creations. They make lovely decorations, or you can hang them from a bag or keys.

We also had a lot of fun with these Halloween Mosaic Wand Kits which were perfect for the children to get on with by themselves. They just need to match the coloured foam stickers to the background, and because the stickers are sparkly they look really good. They were both very proud of their finished creations, and I'm planning on sticking them into a couple of my indoor plant pots for some Halloween spookiness!

Next we made some Spider Weaving Placemat Kits. A large spider is made from foam and the coloured ribbons are woven through. Mia didn't get on very well with this as she's not quite worked out weaving yet, but Harry enjoyed it. He did get a bit fed up before he'd finished the weaving though, and decided to just stick the remaining ribbons on to the spider's feet to finish him off! This would look pretty cool stuck on the front door I think.

Our final Halloween craft was some Bat Handprint Decoration Kits. The children drew around their hands on to a foam sheet and cut them out to make wings for the bat, then the bat was decorated using ready cut foam shapes. The children were both very taken with that craft, and when they had made their bats they went on to make them clothes out of black paper. 

Then they decided between themselves to make a bat cave for them from cushions and blankets, which Harry decorated with a Lego bat and Mia filled with 'treasure' made from Duplo. Playing these bats occupied them for most of the afternoon, so overall a brilliant craft in my book!

I received these products as a member of the Baker Ross Bloggers Network.

An end of summer garden update

It's a nice sunny day today, but it's definitely feels like the end of summer. It doesn't seem to have been such a warm one this year, we've not spent as much time out in the garden as we usually do and the number of barbecues that we've managed has been rather pitiful. Still, now the children are growing up I've had more time to spend on the garden this year, and it's looking tidier than it ever has before! There's still plenty of work to do before winter so hopefully we'll have a few more warm days for the last bits of clearing up.

Our apple tree has done brilliantly this year. We've had so many apples. I've made one apple cake so far with another planned for later, and our neighbours have made apple and strawberry jam. The apple tree definitely needs pruning this winter, it's starting to look a little unkempt, hopefully that won't affect next year's crop.

I was really pleased with the petunias that I planted earlier in the year. They flowered all summer and still have loads of flowers on them now in all different colours. Definitely something to plant again next year.

The vegetable patch has been doing very well too, we've had lots of runner beans and I managed to keep the tomatoes pretty much under control. There are still lots of green ones though, I hope that they ripen up before it gets too cold. I think there are some potatoes growing in there as well but I've not investigated yet, the whole vegetable patch needs a good clearing out but we've run out of space in our garden rubbish bin!

I've enjoyed spending a bit more time in the garden this summer and I'm finally starting to be happy with how it's looking. 

A knitted hot water bottle cover...

...and the further perils of cheap craft kits.

I should have learned my lesson when it comes to skimping on craft supplies (like cheap Hama beads) but I was tempted early this year in the after Christmas sales, and I picked up a knitted hot water bottle cover craft kit in The Works. Harry always sleeps with his mini hot water bottle, even through the summer, and Mia had started wondering why she didn't have one. The main reason that I picked up the kit was because it contained the hot water bottle as well as the pattern and yarns to knit a cover for it.

As you can see from the picture, I ventured off plan a little bit. The original colours in the kit were red and green, but I decided to use some of my own purple yarn instead with the red, as I didn't really like the red/green contrast.

I do have trouble with knitting patterns so it's probably unfair to blame the kit completely, but I was very careful about following the pattern for the first few rows at least, so I'm not sure why the direction of stitches reversed a few rows in. I do quite like the contrasting stripe across the bottom of the cover though, I think it adds a bit of interest. After knitting the main body of the cover the rest of the pattern didn't make a great deal of sense to me, so I kind of made it up as I went along. My version of the hot water bottle cover knitting pattern goes something like - knit in stocking stitch (if you can) for the height of the hot water bottle, decrease for a few rows, then do ribbing for a bit, making the ribbing twice as high as the funnel bit on the hot water bottle so that you can fold it over on itself. Sew it all up, leaving the top open so that you can insert the hot water bottle.

The red wool ran out about two thirds of the way up the back of the cover so I just finished it off in the purple. That meant that I didn't have enough red wool to sew up the edges so I used purple, but luckily that doesn't seem to be noticeable. The kit then called for a white crochet snowflake motif to decorate the front. The crochet instructions made no sense to me whatsoever, so instead I cut out a pink heart from felt and sewed it to the front, much nicer anyway for a year round accessory.

It isn't the most accomplished piece of knitting but I think that it looks quite sweet, and Mia was very happy with it! That's another project ticked off my list of unfinished craft projects.

And despite my limitations when it comes to crochet I'm planning on beginning a new crochet project soon in association with Coats Crafts. I'll be sharing my progress across social media over the next few months, so keep an eye out so that you can follow along with my progress!

The start of term and the end of an era

This morning I sat down at my desk with a hot drink and nearly the whole day ahead of me. My life as I have known it for the last six and a half years, a Mum with young babies and children at home, is officially over! Okay, I was working for a couple of years while Harry was a baby, but memories of that time have pretty much vanished under a thick cloud of sleep deprivation. For the last two years I've also had a couple of mornings a week with them both out the house, but those few hours always went by quickly.

Mia didn't appear to have any concerns or anxieties about starting school. She wanted to put everything away in her classroom herself, and when I popped outside the door to check something she thought I'd gone. I went back in thirty seconds later to find her informing the teacher that she would like to do some colouring, and she looked surprised that I'd reappeared to kiss her goodbye. At her school they start them full time from day one, so I'm sure she's going to be tired in a couple of weeks time!

Harry frets about things a little more and he was a bit anxious about starting Year 2, but when the bell rang he was swept off with his class and I didn't get a backwards glance. I came home with a full to do list, although I chose the wrong thing to start with - decluttering some of the baby and toddler board books - which set me off with a sniffle as I remembered happy hours of reading them to my babies!

Harry and I made Mia a Schultüte - a large cardboard cone filled with sweets and stationery which children receive on their first day of school. It's a German tradition, but I feel a vague affinity with German culture having studied the language for years and lived there for a while. I made one for Harry too when he started two years ago and it's nothing too extravagant, just a couple of bags of sweets and some pencils and bits that she'll need when she starts bringing home school work.

So here's to another new life stage!

Lollipop stick weaving decorations

We had a lot of fun recently making these simple outdoor decorations from weaving lollipop sticks around with odds and ends of wool, so I thought I'd share how we made them!

First you need to make a base shape using sticks. We used coloured lollipop sticks, but you could also use sticks that you've collected on walks out and about (we have a lot of these). I used Bostik glu dots to glue the lollipop sticks together which were perfect as they stuck instantly. You could also use double sided tape, or just any kind of glue and prepare the sticks in advance so that the glue has time to dry.

Then gather together odd bits of coloured wool or thin ribbon and tie the end firmly to the stick before weaving it in and out. Older children will be a bit neater and more methodical, younger children will enjoy wrapping the wool around any which way and just having fun with it.

Make sure that you tie the ends of the wool firmly to the sticks when ending one colour and starting with a new one. Then make a loop with either wool or ribbon so that you can hang up your decorations. I've hung ours on the summerhouse and I know that they won't last forever, but hopefully they'll survive for the rest of the summer at least and then we can make new ones next year!

Memories of Venice

The other day I wrote about my holiday scrapbooks, and how I'd recently enjoyed reading back through them. To be honest they are mostly not that interesting. They are just a factual record of the places that we visited and what we did there, and although they are fun for me to read back through they wouldn't mean much to anyone else.

One of the places that we visited was Venice, for a few days back in February 2005.

I have some very vivid memories of Venice, and it was no surprise to me to find that the only time I ventured away from my usual fact based style was when I wrote a couple of pages about walking through the narrow streets.

So I thought I'd reproduce it here!

The streets of Venice are laid out like a labyrinth, or a drawing by Escher. The streets run in random directions. You are always seeing out of the corner of your eye - a crooked bridge or a tempting alleyway or passage. When faced with a choice of directions, you want to go both ways. When you pass something interesting - like a shop selling writing boxes and stationary all covered with the same beautiful matching paper, or a set of masks labelled with the names of their characters, or a tiny glass Christmas tree, complete with miniature, removable ornaments - you want to make sure that you stop and drink it all in, because you might never be able to find it again. And although in places deserted, it never feels threatening, even with all the dark alleyways.

At night it becomes even more mysterious. It is illuminated, but faintly. Half glimpsed passages, fading away into the darkness. Silence, apart from the lapping of the water. Footsteps in the distance, a few notes of music, laughter, a dog barking - signs of life when it seems deserted. Lanterns on the bridges. Gondolas tied up and covered with tarpaulins. 

Finally, below you can see me on our Venice holiday. It was obviously cold, because I am very rarely seen wearing any kind of hat!

I'd love to go back to Venice one day, although maybe when the children are a little older. I'm not sure I could handle the stress of there being so much water around...